Complexity Theory In Health Care

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Hana,

I don’t know about you, but I initially had difficulty understanding the benefit of complexity theory. It is clear that health care is a complex system, but I still had difficulty understanding this theory. Your reflection of your situation really put complexity theory in perspective for me. In order to understand issues with a system, it is important to explore how things are related, and how they play into the system (Butts & Rich, 2018). Butts and Rich (2018) discuss how one agent can affect the environment for other agents, supporting your observation that by taking on more responsibility than the other nurses, the condition was created to where the other nurses did not have to implement as much change in the system as you. Arévalo and Espinosa (2015) suggest that if an agent were removed from the system, the system would respond by precipitating actions to adapt, resulting in the development of other agents that provide missing …show more content…

I have been in situations where I have felt like I was the only one that is working, but reflecting back on days when I am not there, the work still gets done. As nurses, we have an innate desire to fix things but taking complexity science into account we should allow the system to adapt to changes in the environment (Butts & Rich, 2018). Reflecting on your situation it appears that by not trying to control the situation management was actually promoting complex adaptive system to self-organize. Plsek (1997) suggests that leaders in a complex adaptive system can encourage self-organization and emergent behavior through guidance and limited administration control that encourages adaptability and creativity to develop (as cited by Butts & Rich, 2018). Matlow, Wright, Zimmerman, Thomson, and Valente (2006) suggest that strict control over a complex system can create more complications as individuals try to work around the control, therefore promoting self-organization and allowing the system to adapt may provide better

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